nk Abagnale was an intelligent man. One of the most successful con men in history, Frank lived as a pilot, doctor, lawyer and an FBI agent all before his 21st birthday. His primary technique was defrauding banks using different fake check schemes eventually amounting to over 2.5 million dollars. Along with a friend, Frank wrote his story which was later turned into an autobiographical film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and directed by Steven Speilberg. Much of what Frank accomplished in the film defied believability.

Throughout the film Frank is creating different identities to try and make some money, but even though his name is changed his personality seems to remain the same. From the beginning his father, Frank Sr., is a huge role model for him and becomes the source of Frank’s longing for acceptance and appreciation. Once his parents are divorced Frank just wants everything to be ok and to have the perfect family back together, no matter the cost. In his eyes, his father just needs to win his mother back with a better life and material things when in reality, the relationship has been over for quite some time, a truth made clearly evident by his mother’s affair. Unable to deal with the stress of choosing which parent to live with, Frank runs away and soon realizes he needs to find a way to make money quickly. He first begins to create fake checks at different banks, scamming them out of hundreds of dollars and eventually realizing he needs to find a different way to bring in a steady cash flow. He becomes a pilot for Pan Am Airlines as a “deadhead” who is a backup pilot and therefore does no actual flying on the plane. Meanwhile the FBI’s fraud division has caught on to Frank’s scams and begins to track him down with one detective leading the investigation: Carl Hanratty. It becomes Carl’s personal goal to find Frank with little to no